


Storm At Sea

by horse (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/horse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a 13 day power outage I realised how much my online friends meant to me. How much they must mean to Dirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storm At Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My friends](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+friends).



Day one of the storm. It's not the first one you've ever had to sit through. You figure you'll ride it out just like all the other times Broseidon has taken it upon himself to throw a literal shitstorm in your direction.

You know better than to watch out the window, this time. No use trying to brave it on the roof. You're certainly no meteorologist, but the highspeed winds ushering rain indecisively this way or that way - horizontal sheets of water whirring past the shuddering glass as if a paranoid schizophrenic was courageously warding off all his hallucinated villains with a hose - are more than enough to sit you down, make you reach for that book and distract yourself. You can fix the power when it lets up. Probably a snapped wire, a compromised tower. Something. Fuck, right. Distraction.

\---

Day two is no better than day one. It's still dark, the clouds haven't let up. In fact, you're almost positive they've multiplied. This is also expected, to some degree. You're in the middle of an ocean. These storms are different than the ones Jake reports, even though he's balls deep in what you have always imagined to be a tropical rainforest. You can ascertain that much from the scarce but thoughtful photography he graces you with from time to time. To be honest, though, without the knowledge of him being an islander, you would've pinned it as deciduous for sure. He always picks the most docile location for a shot when he's just photographing himself, which you can understand of course. Once or twice he's sent you one of him mid-adventure, and maybe that's why you like him so much in retrospect - even when he's grappling with exotic ferocity, he's still thinking of his friends. He's still light-hearted and genuine. Maybe a little imbecilic, but we all have our moments, and he has the machismo to make up for it tenfold.

You wish you could talk to him right now. There are days when he can't speak to you because he's busy experiencing certain doom, or similarly atrocious weather (you are a little less accustomed to technical difficulties, because you're so good at keeping things intact, but nobody's perfect, especially in the face of mother nature), and you think of how much nicer it would be if you could spend that time together rather than in imposed and incontestable silence.

He's probably watching one horrible movie after another, snorting unattractively to himself. No doubt he's already formulating an excited synopsis for you.

You're on the edge of your seat, here.

\---

Day three and at least the winds are slowing. Power is still out, but somehow, you catch drifts of connection through AR around noon. Jake and Jane are both offline, but Roxy is on. You sit up abruptly in your bed, sheets disagreeing agitatedly with your jerky movement. Your hair is wild. You'll probably shower soon to pass the time, but for now, you're focused on a certain bibulous broad. 

TT: Roxy.  
TG: ogm  
TG: its been 3 whole days  
TG: i was left 2 my own dervices for 3 whole days  
TT: I'm a little surprised to find you this coherent, actually.  
TG: dont flattrer yourself buddy  
TG: i have better things to sigh wiftuly about  
TG: wistflly*  
TG: wistfully*  
TT: I can't breathe. My lungs are filled with tears.  
TG: nnot that shit again omg lol pls no  
TT: Overflowing with desolation and despair. I look pleadingly at my screen as I choke on my liquid agony.  
TG: dIRKj  
TG: sNOT  
TG: SNORT**  
TG: so ur a fan of choking ;)  
TT: I thought you saved the shameless flirtlarping for AR.  
TG: signs  
TG: waits 4 the day ur not such a fickign stiff  
TG: lols tiff  
TT: Charming.  
TG: unnfortunately ur still busy bein that 2  
TG: but how are u???  
TG: liek seriously  
TG: u there  
TG: dirky  
TG: dirkaleak  
TG: dont leave a lady caller waitin  
TG: :(

You want to throw your shades in frustration, but the fault of lost connection is the weather, not your appliances. If AR could hear you now. 

You have tried, for the past four minutes now, to at least tell Roxy you're alright. You wait all day for the connection to return, but hope fades to dust by the time midnight hits. You feel kind of stupid for how much anxiety is starting to build in your chest. It's bad enough you have no one around, and now, you can't even talk to the only friends you have besides your absentee bots.

To be fair, Squarewave is just hibernating. AR is grousing somewhere under the pretense of low battery. And Lil Cal is here, always here. You lay in bed and clutch him to your chest as you toss and turn. At 3:30am, you finally drift off, praying you'll wake up to a calm sky.

\---

You don't.

Day four is horrendous. Three was total deception. You're starting to get worried. And angry.

You try and open the door to the stairwell, but the wind makes it a real fucking challenge for you. With your shoulder against the solid surface you finally force it open, and then, abruptly, it swings insanely on the hinge and bangs loudly into the wall, held firmly there by persistent, spitting air. You can't see three inches ahead of you, forget three feet. After a half hour, you get the door closed again, and retreat into the bathroom.

The legs of your glasses are bent oddly, making them sit unbalanced on the bridge of your nose. One orange eye stares pointedly back at you from the mirror. Your hair is flat, drenched. Your shirt is soaked. You take it off slowly, watching yourself in the mirror.

Your lips, relaxed, curve up naturally at the ends, so a straight-lipped expression is something you have to manage voluntarily. Otherwise, you'd walk around looking mildly content all the time. That's fine when you're in the privacy of your room, you guess, when no one can see. Thoughts of your isolation hit you, wind you. The face in the mirror contorts to something like pain, to an expression not dissimilar to one you wear when an automated, metal fist connects unexpectedly with your gut.

Your heart beats for attention you are unable to award it.

You are unable to enjoy your shower.

You are unable to sleep.

\---

Day five. You are on the roof, working tirelessly. You set up a tarp, surrounded by towels, so that you can work undisturbed by the precipitation that falls endlessly on your sad little chunk of the earth.

You can't figure out why you can't restore semi-decent connection. You have fixed everything you've caught thus far, even things that didn't directly affect the power outage, things that needed regular maintainance that you'd neglected or overlooked. You can't think. You can't focus. You are afraid of yourself in this state, so you retreat, for a few hours, to your bed.

You lay on your side, facing Cal. You can't even find the words to express yourself. Instead you stare at him, heart beating, as breathing becomes a tedious endeavor.

Your hands are almost black. There are prints all over your bed now, but you dare not touch the little puppet before you, lest you dirty him. You're just lucky he was already on the bed.

You miss your friends. You miss them so much.

You wonder if Jane is doing alright. If she took your advice. If she needs arithmetic-related help again. If she found that recipe for carrot cake. You didn't even know you could make a vegetable based cake. But she'd promised that you'd like it, and you trusted her judgement where baking was concerned way over your own. Which is pretty substantial, you should remind her.

If you could. But you can't.

The steam of the shower is strangely unappealing for once. You turn the water off before you can even undress, and move to the sink. You wash your hands, your face. Everything else is too much work. You stare at yourself in the mirror, even though at this hour, you can barely see anything at all.

The flashlights don't really help. They just emphasise your situation, like faithless beacons in the black muck of night. You've covered the windows because the view has begun to make you sick.

You curl up with Cal. Crane your neck to stare at the upside-down, blank screen over your upside-down, non-functioning turntables. When you go limp all you have to stare at is the ceiling.

Time isn't even a thing anymore. 

Right before you fall asleep, you think you hear the wind die down, just a bit.

\---

Day six begins very empty and bleak. You're too sick to go out in the rain again, but it finally slows to a drizzle after hours of tinkering and reading and sewing. When you open the door this time, it squeaks obligingly and moves smoothly to allow you access to the roof.

By the time you really get to work, you're even sure you hear some seagulls in the distance over your insistent sniffling. Your face is so heavy, but you think you've finally sorted out the problem, now that you've had time to actually think instead of panic and fumble around frantically like a baby with a wire cutter.

When you're done, you don't get up off your knees right away. Instead you sit there as sunlight breeches the horizon for the first time in a long time. It's always beautiful to you – sunsets, sunrises, breaks in the clouds, what have you. God, it fills you with something now, something almost alien because it's so immense. You don't know what to call it. Happiness, relief, anxiety, uncertainty, and general big-ness, and balled up in something that laps at you gently, ebbs and flows on the shore of your sentience, rising with every pull.

You're staring at the sun, and it makes your eyes water. Which is sort of a release. Wall broken.

You don't even notice you're crying until your vision blurs so thoroughly you can only see a mess of watercolours.

\---

You sit at your desk. Everyone is online.  
When they ask how you are, you answer them as cryptically as always, give them mitigated descriptions where you were bored and not tormented.  
You are tempted, at least three times, to advocate how much you love them, to be straight-forward for once.  
All three times, you fall back into the ranks of avoidant remarks and boyish irony.

So it goes.


End file.
